About Your Shadow Self

Okay this is going to be a super Scorpio thing to say but I have a deep fascination with the darker side of humanity. 

I don’t mean what causes people to go all Jeffrey Dahmer (although maybe his Shadow Self did take over). But I mean, what is someone’s darkest desires and motivations? What is that thought or instinct that they would rather die than let anyone know? 

So when I first came across the term Shadow Self in my self discovery journey (ugh I love that it sounds like a Marvel character) you best bet I started researching the hell out of it. Literally any video I could watch or any novel I could get my hands on, I consumed it. 

The Shadow Self goes deeper than the dark traits you can name off the top of your head and talk about with another human. When we’re being integrated into society as children we take every piece of information given and put it into two boxes. Either something that is socially acceptable and therefore should be integrated into our personality or something that should be rejected and tamed. If it’s something that’s being rejected we tuck it away, telling ourselves it doesn’t belong in our conscious state. But it’s not like there's a delete button for your traits - it's still a part of you, it’s still facets of your personality. So then it hibernates, silently, in the back of the mind. Growing a little more every you reject more pieces of yourself that don’t line up with society's morals. 

This can have catastrophic result, obviously. Someone who's suppressing parts of their personality can suffer from anxiety and depression or just a general lack of happiness. It's a block that doesn't allow for full self-exploration and development. Self medication is super popular in these situations too... basically anything that allows the person to keep running from their 'demons' for as long as possible. Anything that allows the suppression to continue. 

So then what do you? These pieces of yourself are literally defined as socially unacceptable. For some people it's even deeper. Traits that make you feel alienated or unlovable by others. So it’s not like you can act on them - they’re suppressed for a reason. You're afraid of them and keep them locked up for a reason.

So, as in most things, it's a paradox. The trick is not to act on your Shadow Self but to accept it. Speaking from the Law of Energy, if you’re angry and you act on that anger all it’s going to attract more anger to you. However, if you're angry and you don't fight that emotion and tell yourself 'Okay, I'm angry right now. I see that and I know that. I don't want to do something I'm gonna regret so I'm going to act in this way instead...'. You don't act on it but accept it. Surrender to it and admit that it’s there but know you’re better than that instinct and make the decision to act in right way. The way that’s going to attract more positivity to you. 

When learning about the Law of Attraction one of first lessons is that you can't control your thoughts. Your mind is literally made to constantly supply to you stories and assumptions and feelings. But the thing is not all of them come from you. It's literally just pulling information from every conversation you've heard, show you've watched, book you've read... literally anything. That's why it's so easy to have a negative thought when you don't intuitively feel any negative emotion in a situation. In that case, it's a matter of clocking it and accepting that you had that thought but that it doesn't make it real. By freaking out or obsessing you make the thought ten times worse and negativity starts flying to you like a magnet. Instead you say, 'Okay I had that thought for a second but what about...' and you fill it in with a sentence that you intuitively feel good with.

So when you feel a thought or emotion from your Shadow Self do not run from it. You can explore it and learn from it to understand why it's there. There are a lot of ways to do this (my personal favorite is journaling) but do not suppress it and then beat yourself up about it. Having a dark side is such a human thing but you have to meet it before it starts controlling you and your actions.

The archetype of accepting your Shadow Self is one that’s found in many religions and spiritual explorations. The Yin and Yang. Jesus’s 40 days of temptations in the desert. Even Buddha met his form of Satan and had to face his temptations. Hell, even if you have absolutely no spiritual background to know these stories if you've seen it in Star Wars you've seen this story. Anakin’s journey is basically the outline of someone struggling with their Shadow Self (literally even changes his name to Darth Vader when it takes over) until they ultimately find the balance. Also Star Wars can be used for any life metaphor - I didn’t realize this until sitting in a life coaching session one night and it came up but as always I digress...

There’s magic that happens when light and dark meet. It’s not about the separation of the two, constantly needing to live a life in total light and divinity and then feeling imperfect when the dark inevitable takes over. One cannot exist without the other. The more you put your energy into trying to obtain a life of pure light the more you’re going suppress and therefore feed your dark side. It’s recognizing the darker traits, accepting them and then making the choice to act in the right way instead of pretending to be something that you’re not. By accepting them, you take away their power to control you. As everything, there needs to be a balance. 

Only then can you obtain a true level of self-acceptance and self-love. Only then can you live your life fully and authentically.

Love, 

A.